Full disclosure up front: I voted for Gary Johnson. Like the majority of Americans, I found both of the major party candidates unfit to be President. Unlike the majority of Americans, I refused to decide to vote for the “lesser of two evils.” My conscience wouldn’t allow me to vote for either and I don’t care that my candidate had “no chance to win” and that all my vote did was “help someone else win” (which in my state at least, wasn’t true–Trump won Indiana by a much larger total than the 3rd party vote could have made up).

There is plenty of good analysis you can get from plenty of sources about the general election, but I want to use my strong point–math–to add a take you probably haven’t heard yet. If you subscribe to the conventional wisdom that a Democratic candidate other than Hillary Clinton would have beaten Donald Trump, and that a Republican candidate “less evil” than Donald Trump also would have beaten Hillary Clinton, likely by a larger margin, then please note this:

There were 126,247,767 votes cast for President in the November 8 general election (most updated totals I could find as of Thursday evening). Between January and June, 24.5% of them voted for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton in a Presidential Primary or Caucus. Yes, that’s right, less than a quarter of the voters of the general election were responsible for providing the rest of us these two choices. Another 24.4% actually tried to provide the country with a different alternative by voting for Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz, John Kasich or one of the other candidates in their party’s Primary/Caucus. If you’ve already done the math, you know that over half of the people who cast a vote in Tuesday’s Presidential election didn’t even bother to weigh in on who they thought should be one of the two major party candidates.

If you are someone who is very upset that Donald Trump is going to be President, you may have some anger toward people who voted for him. I’m not going to pass any judgment on that, but I am going to suggest that all the people who didn’t bother to come out to vote in January-June to try and get us better candidates deserve just as much of your anger. An awful lot of people sat around and let others decide that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton should be our choices.

So let’s do this better in 2020. Vote in a Primary/Caucus. Encourage your family and friends to vote as well. Don’t let less than a quarter of voters decide in the Spring on the two that the rest of us get as choices in the Fall.

If you liked this post, please share it, and set yourself a reminder to share it again in early 2020. If you disagree, leave a comment. I always welcome discussion.